16 July 2011

A slice of lime in the soda

Jul 15, 2011 11:06 EDT

This is why I love FT Alphaville in general and Tracy Alloway in particular: she’ll dutifully read 14 pages into something entitled “The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision Joint Forum Report on Asset Securitisation Incentives” before coming across this chart and immediately realizing just how important it is.

I’ve put a bigger version here for people who want to pass it around in all its horrifying glory, but it’s also worth spelling things out, because it might not be immediately obvious.

The big-picture thing to remember when looking at this chart is something which I’ve said many times before — that it wasn’t an excess of greed and speculation which led to the financial crisis, but rather an excess of overcaution, with an attendant surge in demand for triple-A-rated bonds. On a micro level, triple-A securities are safer than any other securities. But on a macro level, they’re much more dangerous, precisely because they’re considered risk-free. They breed complacency and regulatory arbitrage, and they are a key ingredient in the cause of all big crises, which is leverage.

At the left-hand side of the chart we see that global issuance of triple-A bonds was more or less nonexistent back in the early 90s. All those Treasury bonds, all those agency securities from Fannie and Freddie, all that Japanese debt — add it all up, and it still comes to essentially zero by the standards of what seems normal today. Check out the left-hand y-axis: it goes up in $1 trillion increments. And we’re not talking stock, here, we’re talking flows: this chart is issuance per year.

(It’s pretty easy to see, looking at this chart, how a company like Pimco can find itself with over $1 trillion in assets under management: that’s now just a small fraction of the bonds issued each year.)

Now zoom back, and look at the chart as a whole: it’s going up and to the right, which says two things. Firstly, the amount of debt in the world is soaring. That’s a bad thing, because debt is much more systemically dangerous than equity. And secondly, the amount of triple-A debt in the world is soaring as well. Which is a worse thing, because triple-A debt is much more systemically dangerous than most other debt.

Then look at the green line. Triple-A debt wasn’t a huge part of the bond market back in the early 90s, but for the past decade it has invariably accounted for somewhere between 50% and 60% of total global fixed income issuance. That’s possibly the most horrifying bit of all: it simply defies credulity for anybody to be asked to believe that more than half the bonds issued in any given year are essentially free of any credit risk.

Finally, look at the way that the maroon bars — structured products, basically — have given way to a scarily large purple bar at the far right of the chart. That’s sovereign debt, and it tells you all you need to know about where the next crisis is likely to come from.

In a nutshell, triple-A debt is dangerous; there’s far too much of it; its growth seems out of control; and the triple-A problem has now become a sovereign-debt problem, in a world where sovereign-debt crises are the most damaging crises of all.

All that said, there are two things worth bearing in mind which make the chart slightly less horrific. The first is that for reasons I don’t understand, the chart ends in 2009, a crisis year when sovereigns pulled out all the stops in their attempt to prevent a global Depression. We’re more than halfway into 2011 at this point, there’s no good reason why the chart couldn’t include 2010 as well. And that might show 2009 as being a bit of an aberration. Does anybody have the numbers for total triple-A bond issuance in 2010, and how much of that was sovereign?

And secondly, any kind of debt-issuance chart is likely to go up and to the right to some extent, just because borrowing needs never go away, and old debt needs to get rolled over. The total stock of triple-A debt isn’t increasing by this many trillions of dollars per year, and it would be great to see a second chart of how much that is increasing, and how much of it is sovereign.

Still, flows matter. If sovereigns start being downgraded from triple-A status, debt is going to get a lot more expensive, and those rollovers — which cost very little in the current interest-rate environment — will really start to bite. And the invidious thing about debt is that it doesn’t go away. Deleveraging is painful, and is often accompanied by inflation or default. And the more debt you have to start with, the more painful deleveraging is going to be. Prepare yourselves.

10 July 2011

You've seen life through distorted eyes
You know you had to learn
The execution of your mind
You really had to turn
The race is run the book is read
The end begins to show
The truth is out, the lies are old
But you don't want to know

Nobody will ever let you know
When you ask the reasons why
They just tell you that you're on your own
Fill your head all full of lies

- H.G. Wells, author ofThe Future in America, The Open Conspiracy, and What Are We To Do With Our Lives?-- three seminal books in the Progressive Movement

When it comes to Fascism and the Left, there are two types of Leftists: The Liars and the Naive.

According to The Social Science Encyclopedia, Fascism opposes multiple ideologies: American Liberalism (Soph: American Liberalism should not to be confused with European Liberalism, which often runs toward the right side of the political spectrum), Conservatism, and two of the major forms of Socialism: Bolshevism and Social Democracy. Many on the Left believe that Fascism means Right and
Socialism/Communism means Left. It truly is not that simple. Those are
the Naive.

For starters, that Left-Right divide only works in Europe where conservatives are more like American Democrats than a Tea Partier. Everything happens left of centre so, of course, Fascist is right-wing...on the left side of the centre. Secondly, review each of these platforms, take out the reference to Jews, and try to explain how they are diametrically different:

"Ah, yes! The anti-elitist, stock-market-abolishing, child-labour-ending, public-health-promoting, wealth-confiscating, draft-ending, secular right-wingers of the Nazi Party! That can't be. Something is clearly wrong. Everyone knows that Fascists are corporatists and would never call for the abolition of the stock market and demand national health care and labour laws!"

"We
are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system
for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries,
with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and
property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are
determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

"Ah, yes! The anti-elitist, stock-market-abolishing, child-labour-ending, public-health-promoting, wealth-confiscating, draft-ending, secular right-wingers of the Socialist Party of America! Wait! What? Socialists aren't right-wingers, but the platform is nearly identical to the 25 point platform of the Nazis! I'm so confused!"

"As
socialists, we are opponents of the Jews, because we see, in the
Hebrews, the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation’s
goods."

-Joseph Goebbels

"Auschwitz
meant that six million Jews were killed, and thrown on the waste-heap
of Europe, for what they were considered: money-Jews. Finance capital
and the banks, the hard core of the system of imperialism and
capitalism, had turned the hatred of men against money and
exploitation, and against the Jews. . . . Antisemitism is really a
hatred of capitalism."

"Yes, of course, Social Justice is a tenet of the left. Huh? What did you say? Father Coughlin founded the NUSJ and its magazine?? How is that possible? I've always been told that Father Coughlin (Surprise!) was a Fascist. How can he have a platform similar to the Socialist Party of America while both are similar to the Nazi and Italian Fascist platforms? It just can't be!"

"This
year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilised nation
has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more
efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!"

-Adolf Hitler, 1935

Then, there are the Liars. American Progressives, for the most part, did not disavow Fascism until the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust became manifest during World War II. After the war, those Progressives who had praised Mussolini and Hitler in the 1920s and 1930s had no choice, but to dissociate themselves from Fascism.

"There is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it.
There is, above all, genuine, revolutionary feeling, which is alive
everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists. I
have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that
former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The
petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never
make a National Socialist, but the Communists always will. "

– Adolph Hitler

Following Stalin’s lead, leftist intellectuals redefined Fascism as 'right-wing' and projected their own sins onto conservatives, even as they continued to borrow heavily from Fascist and pre-Fascist thought. This Progressive campaign to recast Fascism as the "right-wing" antithesis of Communism was aided by Joseph Stalin, who began to label all of the most blatantly evil traits shared by Communism and Fascism alike, as simply “Fascist.” Hell, Stalin called TROTSKY a FASCIST!

"Most cruel joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on
those German capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National
Socialism as a means of saving Germany's bourgeois economic structure
from radicalism. The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state
also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated
outright, on other what amounts to a capital tax has been levied.
Profits have been strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing
Governmental control and interference in business could be deduced from
the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial orders in
Germany originated last year with the Government. Hard-pressed for food-
stuffs as well as funds, the Nazi regime has taken over large estates
and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a procedure
fundamentally similar to Russian Communism."

- Time Magazine;
2 January 1939

Some aspects of Naziism:

Universal healthcare

Universal education

Kraft durch Freude (Strength Through Joy) free vacations to resorts and cruises for Germans paid for by the state, plus a national policy that guaranteed paid vacations

As you can see from the list above, any and all of these can be found on signs at your nearest Tea Party event, especially calls for socialised medicine, gun control, and the replacement of the church with the state. Sarc.

Now, often, we are told that Libertarians and Conservatives in the United States are Nazis & Fascists because the support States' Rights (so do American Liberals, when they want: SSM, drug decriminalisation, etc.), but such slurs belie a supreme ignorance on the part of the hurler. Fundamental to Naziism and Fascism are two central tenets: The individual belongs to the state and a strong, authoritarian, central government is primary over all. Any demand for "states' rights" in Berlin would have earned a protestor an escort to the basement at Tiergartenstrasse 4 for a little conversation with the SS, if not summary execution or ticket to a concentration camp.

"Since for
us the state as such is only a form, but the essential is its content,
the nation, the people, it is clear that everything else must be
subordinated to its sovereign interests. In particular we cannot grant
to any individual state within the nation and the state representing it
state sovereignty and sovereignty in point of political power ... [the] mischief of individual federated states…must cease and will some day
cease…. National Socialism as a matter of principle must lay claim to
the right to force its principles on the whole German nation without
consideration of previous federated state boundaries."

- Adolf Hitler

"It enables us to see at
once why democracy and Bolshevism, which in the eyes of the world are
irrevocably opposed to one another, meet again and again on common ground
in their joint hatred of and attacks on authoritarian nationalist concepts
of State and State systems. For the authoritarian nationalist conception
of the State represents something essentially new ... united above all by
the violence of their assault upon authoritarian-nationalist State concepts ... We have given the principle of Socialism a new meaning."

- Joseph Goebbels, 10 September 1938

Let's just look at some of the praise that earlier Progressives had for Fascism and Totalitarianism:"

"The Fascist principles are very similar to those which have been evolving in America and are of particular interest at this time."

-FDR's National Recovery Act Study

"That we (those in FDR Administration) are not afraid of exploring anything within the law, and we have lawyers who will declare anything you want to do legal."

- Harry Hopkins, Member of FDR administration and New Deal Communist

At one point, FDR aide Harold Ickes had to warn FDR that Americans had started to:

"...unconsciously group four names, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Roosevelt."

In 1932, H. G. Wells, one of the most influential Progressives of the 20th century, said that Progressives must become “liberal Fascists” and “enlightened Nazis.” Regarding totalitarianism, he opined:

“I have never been able to escape altogether from its relentless logic.”

Calling for a “‘Phoenix Rebirth’ of Liberalism” under the umbrella of “Liberal Fascism,” Wells said:

“I am asking for a Liberal Fascisti, for enlightened Nazis.”

- H.G. Wells

“Beyond question, an amazing experiment is being made [in Italy], an experiment in reconciling individualism and socialism...Fascism is an amazing experiment in reconciling individualism and socialism."

- Charles Beard, an eminent historian, wrote of Mussolini’s efforts

Muckraking Progressive journalists almost universally admired Mussolini. Lincoln Steffens, for one, said that Italian Fascism made Western democracy, by comparison, look like a system run by “petty persons with petty purposes.” Steffens referred to the “Russian-Italian” method as if the two were flip sides of the same coin.

Steffens and his fellow Progressives generally saw Mussolini, Lenin, and Stalin as three men pursuing a similar objective: the fundamental transformation of corrupt and outdated societies. Mussolini, Steffens proclaimed reverently, had been “formed” by God “out of the rib of Italy.” About Russia -"I have seen the future and it works."

"A great step forward and the first new ideal in government since the founding of the American Republic.”

After having visited Italy and interviewed Mussolini in 1926, the American humorist, Will Rogers, who was informally dubbed “Ambassador-at-Large of the United States” by the National Press Club, said of the Fascist dictator:

“I’m pretty high on that bird...Dictator form of government is the greatest form of government, that is, if you have the right dictator.”

"[The establishment of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany had been] absolutely necessary to get the state in order. I stand in wonder...as a Bolshevik."

- W. E. B. DuBois, co-founder of the NAACP and Communist, who saw National Socialism as a worthy model for economic organisation

“[T]here is today, in some respects, more democracy in Germany than there has been in years past.”

- W. E. B. DuBois, 1937

"Eugenics is the most important significant..and genuine branch of sociology and Germany has perfected in with the Aktion T4 programme.”

- John Maynard Keynes

"Much of what H.G. Wells has imagined and worked for is physically there in Nazi Germany.”

- George Orwell

“It's the cleanest, neatest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious. I find Italy doing many of the things which seem to me necessary.... Mussolini certainly has the same people opposed to him as FDR has.”

- Rexford Guy Tugwell, FDR adviser, on the subject of Italian Fascism

"[The Roosevelt administration was] trying out the economics of Fascism.”

- George Soule, Editor of The New Republic and avid supporter of FDR

- Playwright George Bernard Shaw hailed Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini as the world’s great “Progressive” leaders because they “did things,” unlike the leaders of those “putrefying corpses” called parliamentary democracies.

"Eugenics must be the central tenant of any true successful socialism."

"We should find ourselves committed to killing a great many people whom we now leave living, and to leave living a great many people whom we at present kill. We should have to get rid of all ideas about capital punishment. … A part of eugenic politics would finally land us in an extensive use of the lethal [gas] chamber. A great many people would have to be put out of existence simply because it wastes other people's time to look after them."

- In 1934, the Vlkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party's official newspaper, said:

"Roosevelt is as a man of irreproachable, extremely responsible character and immovable will... with a profound understanding of social needs...with nationalist socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies."

- Mussolini:

"America has a dictator in FDR. America itself is abandoning them ("outdated notions" of democracy and classical liberalism). Roosevelt is moving, acting, giving orders independently of the decisions or wishes of the Senate or Congress. There are no longer intermediaries between him and the nation. There is no longer a parliament but an ‘état majeur.’ There are no longer parties, but a single party. A sole will silences dissenting voices. This has nothing to do with any demo-liberal conception of things. [The way Roosevelt] calls his readers to battle is reminiscent of the ways and means by which fascism awakened the Italian people. Without question, the sea change in America resembles that of fascism. It is not to be emphasised that Roosevelt's policy is fascist because these comments are immediately cabled to the United States and are used by his foes to attack him."

- Fortune Magasine:

"The corporate state is to Mussolini what the New Deal is to Roosevelt."

"...a very genteel and dainty and pleasant form of Fascism which cannot be called Fascism at all because it will be so virtuous and polite.”

- New Republic founder Herbert Croly, one of the most important voices in American intellectual history and a leftist icon for more than a century. Specifically, Croly embraced economic socialism; promoted febrile nationalism; said that a “great” and heroic revolutionary leader was needed in order to restore American pride; rejected the concept of parliamentary democracy; believed that society could be guided to enlightenment by an intellectual elite – a cast of “social engineers” whose “beneficent activities” could bring about a “better future”; and rejected individualism, saying that “an individual has no meaning apart from the society in which his individuality has been formed.”

He said that these ideals were, by definition, both Fascist and Progressive.

- The education reformer and socialist John Dewey spoke of the “social possibilities of war” and the “immense impetus to reorganisation”that it afforded. He added, with an air of hopefulness, that the conflict might force Americans“to give up much of [their] economic freedom”;to abandon their “individualistic tradition” and “march in step”; and to recognize “the supremacy of public need over private possessions.”

- The poet Wallace Stevens pronounced himself:

“Pro-Mussolini personally.”

- The Progressive financier George Perkins said:

"[T]he great European war … is striking down individualism and building up collectivism.”

"[The war effort] is a story of the conversion of a hundred million combatively individualistic people into a vast cooperative effort in which the good of the unit was sacrificed to the good of the whole.”

- The social worker Felix Adler said the regimentation imposed on society by the war effort was helping America create the:

“...perfect man…a fairer and more beautiful and more righteous type than any…that has yet existed.”

- Arthur Bullard, journalist and statesman, chronicle the major world political and economic events relating to World War I and its aftermath:

"[In Germany], any citizen who did not put the state first is merely dead weight."

- Harold Laski: (friend to FDR and other American Democrats):

"Socialists have to inculcate that spirit which would give offenders against the state short shrift and the nearest lamppost."

- Progressive Charles Van Hise:

"We know enough about eugenics so that if the knowledge were applied the defective classes would disappear within a generation."

- Isaac F. Marcosson in the NY Times:

"Mussolini is a Latin Teddy Roosevelt."

- Will Rogers:

"I'm pretty high on Mussolini 'Dictatorship' is the right form of government if you have the right dictator."

- John Patrick Duggins:

"[Columbia University is] Fascism's veritable home in America and a school house for budding fascists ideologues."

- Nicholas Butler: (President of Columbia University) received a signed photo from Mussolini thanking him for his:

"...most valuable contribution to the promotion of understanding between Fascist Italy and the United States.”

"He (Mussolini) stands out like a Modern Caesar - the answer to America's needs.”

- Irving Louis Horowitz, radical Leftist sociology pioneer:

"Fascism will return to the United States not as right wing ideology but almost as a quasi-leftist ideology.”

- McClure's magazine:

"Fascism is a 'great step forward' and the first new idea in government since the founding of the American Republic."

- Walter Lippman:

"The [economic] situation is critical, Franklin. You may have no alternative, but to assume dictatorial powers."

- Jane Addams:

"[T]he individual must lose the sense of personal achievement...In Italy they are called Fascists; in Germany they are called Nazis; in America they are called Progressives."

- Walter Rauschenbusch:

"Individualism means tyranny."

- Stuart Chase:

"[Nazi] Party officials...create a new heaven on earth...Why should Russia have all the fun of remaking a world?"

- Father Charles Coughlin:

"Capitalism is doomed."

- Nazi newspaper: described Roosevelt as:

"A man of irreproachable, extremely responsible character and immovable will... with a profound understanding of social needs...with nationalist socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies."

- Sidney Webb:

"When the Nazi took over they replaced the traditional infrastructure of the state and churches with a Nazi monopoly on charity."

-Foreign Affairs:

"The Italian (fascist) system treated workers better."

"Jena
by this time was a center of antitobacco activism -- mainly through the
labors of Karl Astel, director of the new institute [Institute for
Tobacco Hazards Research] and president, since the summer of 1939, of
the University of Jena. Astel was head of the Thuringia's office of
Racial Affairs and a notorious antisemite and racial hygienist (he had
joined the Nazi party and the SS in July of 1930) ... Astel was also a
militant antismoker and teetolater who once characterized opposition to
tobacco as a 'national socialist duty.' On May 1, 1941, he banned
smoking in all buildings and classrooms of the University of Jena, and
the following spring, as head of Thuringia's Public Health Office, he
announced a smoking ban in all regional schools and health offices.
Tobacco in his view had to be fought 'cigar by cigar, cigarette by
cigarette, and pack by pack' -- hence his notoriety for snatching
cigarettes from the mouth of students who dared to violate his Jena
University tobacco ban."

- Robert N. Proctor

- Mein Kampf is replete with "attacks on dividend hungry businessmen whose greed, ruthlessness and short sighted narrow mindedness were ruining the economy. The Nazi Party labour union threatened to put business leaders in concentration camps if they didn't increase workers' wages."

These are the demands that Hitler made in Mein Kampf and which became the known, variously, as the Nazi Manifesto, Hitler's Manifesto, the Nazi 25-Point Plan, the National Socialist Programme, and The 25-Points of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP)) :

We demand that all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished.We therefore demand the total confiscation of all war profits.We demand the nationalisation of all trusts.We demand profit-sharing in large industries.We demand a generous increase in old-age pensions.

We demand the creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class.We demand the immediate communalisation of large stores which will be rented cheaply to small tradespeople.We demand the strongest consideration must be given to ensure that small traders shall deliver the supplies needed by the State, the provinces and municipalities.We demand an agrarian reform in accordance with our national requirements.We demand the enactment of a law to expropriate the owners without compensation of any land needed for the common purpose. We demand the abolition of ground rents.We demand the prohibition of all speculation in land.

We demand that ruthless war be waged against those who work to the injury of the common welfare. We demand that traitors, usurers, profiteers, etc., be punished with death, regardless of creed or race.We demand that Roman law, which serves a materialist ordering of the world, be replaced by German common law.We demand that the State assume the responsibility of organising thoroughly the entire cultural system of the people to make it possible for every capable and industrious person to obtain higher education and thus the opportunity to reach into positions of leadership.We demand that specially talented children of poor parents, whatever their station or occupation, be educated at the expense of the State.

We demand that the conception of the State Idea (science of citizenship) must be taught in the schools from the very beginning.We demand that the curricula of all educational establishments shall be adapted to practical life.We demand that the State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by providing maternity welfare centres.We demand that the State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by prohibiting juvenile labour.We demand that the State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by increasing physical fitness through the introduction of compulsory games and gymnastics.

We demand that the State has the duty to help raise the standard of national health by the greatest possible encouragement of associations concerned with the physical education of the young. We demand the abolition of the regular army and the creation of a national (folk) army.We demand that there be a legal campaign against those who propagate deliberate political lies and disseminate them through the press. We demand freedom for all religious faiths in the state, insofar as they do not endanger its existence or offend the moral and ethical sense of a special race or class. We demand COMMON GOOD BEFORE INDIVIDUAL GOOD.In order to carry out this programme we demand: the creation of a strong central authority in the State.

We further demand the unconditional authority by the political central parliament of the whole State and all its organisations.We further demand the formation of professional committees and of committees representing the several estates of the realm, to ensure that the laws promulgated by the central authority shall be carried out by the federal states.

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/riseofhitler/25points.htm

Goebbels On National-Socialism, Bolshevism, and Democracy

10 September 1938

Men and women of the National-Socialist Party:

Public
life in Europe to-day is influenced by three striking political phenomena,
which I will group together under the popular heading 'National-Socialism,
Bolshevism, and Democracy.' It is, however, clear to me that these names
cannot define their full significance. The general public thinks of
them as a triangle of irreconcilable contrasts. It would be understandable
and logical if their reactions upon political personalities, actions,
achievements, negotiations, and developments showed a corresponding
degree of contrasts, but this is only the case to a limited extent.
Often, and indeed mostly, we find, where decisive political problems
are concerned, a united front of democracy and Bolshevism opposed to
the nationalist, authoritarian States and their representatives. This
is one of the most puzzling phenomena of modern politics. It can only
be explained by the essential nature of the three political systems.
I therefore think it necessary to analyse them in some detail from the
theoretical point of view and in their effect on racial relations in
Europe.

The political starting-point of democracy dates from
the storming of the Bastille in 1789. The new principles of the State
and social life which were then proclaimed, as previously in liberal
philosophy, were Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. ... Economic and
cultural liberty was proclaimed.The individual, who in the authoritarian
State was of secondary importance, emancipated himself and was released
from the authoritarian tie to the State.The ideas and conceptions of
this so-called 'Great Revolution' were expressed in the popular and
psychologically prevalent slogan that all those who bear human form
are equal. ... Everywhere the more or less complete severance of the
tie which binds the individual to the community was elevated into a
principle. The Revolution thus carried within it the seeds of the Marxist-Bolshevist
conceptions which were later to arise. It was not until the twentieth
century that this lack of connexion found its ultimate expression in
the Bolshevist system. ...

The fact that the causes and effective potentialities
of Bolshevism were already existent in a latent form in democracy explains
why Bolshevism flourishes only on democratic soil, and is indeed generally
the inevitable consequence of a radical and excessively democratic conception
of the State. Bolshevism allegedly makes a classless society its aim.
The equality of whatever bears a human form, which democracy applied
only to political and social life, is set up as a ruling principle for
economic life also. In this respect there are supposed to be no differences
left. But this equality of all individuals in respect of economic goods
can, in the Marxist-Bolshevist view, result only from a brutal and pitiless
class struggle. ... It is only logical that in connexion with this,
Bolshevism should proclaim the equality of nations and races. ... The
opposition between the democratic and the Bolshevist mentality and conception
of the State are in the last resort merely theoretical, and here we
have the answer to the mysterious riddle which overshadows Europe and
the explanation both of the opposition in the lives of nations to-day
and of the things which they have in common. It enables us to see at
once why democracy and Bolshevism, which in the eyes of the world are
irrevocably opposed to one another, meet again and again on common ground
in their joint hatred of and attacks on authoritarian nationalist concepts
of State and State systems. For the authoritarian nationalist conception
of the State represents something essentially new.In it the French
Revolution is superseded. ...

It is no proof to the contrary that democracy and
Bolshevism will not make public admission of any common cause. ... They
put up artificial oppositions of a purely theoretical character which
on closer inspection are seen to be without substance. ... They do not
touch the root on the matter. At heart democracy and Bolshevism are
closely related and indeed almost identical. They represent merely different
stages in the development of a common outlook. Bolshevism is in a sense
the bad boy of democracy. Democracy gave it birth, brought it up, and
alone keeps it alive. It may be ashamed of the connexion now and again,
but at critical moments in European life the maternal instinct breaks
through and the two again present a common front, united above all by
the violence of their assault upon authoritarian-nationalist State concepts,
which they have come to recognize as their bitterest, most dangerous
foes. ...

We have modernized and ennobled the concept of democracy.
With us it means definitely the rule of the people, in accordance with
its origin. We have given the principle of Socialism a new meaning.
... Never have we left anyone in doubt that National-Socialism is not
for export. ... We do not aim at world domination, but we do intend
to defend our country, and it is our new conceptions which give us the
inexhaustible and ever-renewed strength to do so. ...

We Germans were strong in the past, but nothing more
than strong; and when our weapons were taken from us, we lay helpless.
In that time of national suffering we learned that the strength of nations
lies not only in weapons, but in ideas. A great idea and the faith which
it inspires can remove mountains. Weapons cannot produce ideas, but,
as Germany has shown, ideas can produce weapons. ... The Fuehrer himself
gave us this great and vivid idea of liberty which fills and inspires
us all to-day. And, most essential of all, he is producing the weapons
with which to defend the ideas and their political and economic outcome.
Now we no longer fear anyone or anything. ...

You've seen life through distorted eyesYou know you had to learnThe execution of your mindYou really had to turnThe race is run the book is readThe end begins to showThe truth is out, the lies are oldBut you don't want to knowNobody will ever let you knowWhen you ask the reasons whyThey just tell you that you're on your ownFill your head all full of liesThe people who have crippled youYou want to see them burnThe gates of life have closed on youAnd now there's just no returnYou're wishing that the hands of doomCould take your mind awayAnd you don't care if you don't see againThe light of dayNobody will ever let you knowWhen you ask the reasons whyThey just tell you that you're on your ownFill your head all full of liesWhere can you run toWhat more can you doNo more tomorrowLife is killing youDreams turn to nightmaresHeaven turns to hellBurned out confusionNothing more to tellEverything around youWhat's it coming toGod knows as your dog knowsBog blast all of youSabbath Bloody SabbathNothing more to doLiving just for dyingDying just for you